The GNU sort
text utility features a non-standard -R
option to randomize input lines.
OSX sort
does not have this extension. Is there similar functionality available in another text filter?
If you want, you can install GNU sort
through GNU's coreutils package over Homebrew, which is a package manager for OS X.
Running this would install Homebrew.
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Then just follow the installation instructions. When Homebrew is installed, run
brew install coreutils
This will install GNU sort as gsort
, so you can use it like sort
on any GNU Linux.
Alternatively, have a look at these Stack Overflow questions, which mention a couple of methods:
How can I randomize the lines in a file using a standard tools on Redhat Linux
How can I shuffle the lines of a text file in Unix command line?
Or take a look at this commandlinefu.com page:
On OS X, if you don't want to install homebrew (but you really should), you could use perl
or ruby
:
perl -MList::Util -e 'print List::Util::shuffle <>'
or
ruby -e 'puts STDIN.readlines.shuffle'
Use shuf
or sort
from coreutils
package, but then you've to add /usr/local/bin
to your PATH
in ~/.bashrc
file, for example:
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Alternatively you can try ex
:
ex -s +"%s/^/\=reltimestr(reltime())[-2:].' '" +"sort n" +"%s/^\S* //" +%p -cq! /dev/stdin
Source: How to shuffle a list in vim?
You could install the rl
command via homebrew (brew install randomize-lines
).
It is quite fast and has options to limit the number of returned items, as well as specify the delimiter (space instead of line feed, for instance).
(See also https://stackoverflow.com/a/42056195/43615.)